Ha ha!

You certainly never know what movie he'll review next!

Monday, 28 April 2014

Burl reviews Track 29! (1988)

Choo choo, it’s Burl! Yes, ha ha, it’s me again, here with a
review of a Nicolas Roeg movie! I know what you’re saying: isn’t this the
fellow who photographed Roger Corman’s Masque
of the Red Death? Ha ha, what’s he doing directing a picture? Well he’s
directed plenty of pictures actually, beginning with the time he worked with
Donald Cammell on Performance!

This movie, like so many of his movies, features his wife
Theresa Russell, well-known for her role in Black Widow! The picture is called Track 29,
and I do believe I saw it at a film festival screening back when it was first
released! I thought it was a strange picture then, and I feel the same way now
that I’ve had another look at it!

Russell stars as Linda, the wife of model train railroadist
and part-time geriatric therapist Henry Henry, played of course by Christopher
“Buckaroo Banzai” Lloyd!
It’s not a happy marriage, frankly! Well, along comes a strange young
Englishman played by Gary Oldman from Sid
& Nancy! He catches a ride from tattoo*ed trucker Leon Rippy, who you’d
think would be staying away from trucks after Maximum Overdrive, and spends a crazy day with Linda, wherein it
turns out he might exist or he might not!

In the meantime Henry Henry catches some brutal glove-sp*nkings
from his nurse, Sandra Bernhard – an actress well-known for her part in Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird
– and some heat from his boss, Seymour “Eye of the Tiger” Cassel! There are plenty of flashbacks, some odd happenings,
a truck crashing through a house, a train set destroyed and a bloody n*de knife
poking with plenty of spurting blood, and any or all of this may or may not be
imaginary!

It’s all not just strange but willfully strange, and therein
lies the problem, maybe! It’s a bit too forced, ha ha, and seems the more so
when you realize it was all filmed in the same general location as Blue Velvet, a far superior weird
picture! The psychology behind all these cornfabulations is pretty dime-book,
and none of it is terribly persuasive as recognizable human behaviour!

It’s another effort from moptop George Harrison’s HandMade Films,
which made some good pictures like Time
Bandits, Mona Lisa and Withnail & I, but also quite a few
mandrakes like Shanghai Surprise, How To Get Ahead in Advertising and this
one! You’ve got to give them some credit though – they were risktakers who made
a pretty good go of it for a while, and left behind some fine, unusual
pictures! Ha ha!

But Track 29 just
isn’t one of their better ones! It’s hairbrained, which is odd considering the
talent involved! Oldman’s performance is goofy and Russell’s is just plain bad!
Lloyd is pretty good though, especially in a rousing model train speech scene
he gives near the end! Altogether I think the thing to do is shout “woo woo!”
and give Track 29 one and a half
gurning old men!